After 20 record setting seasons, Atlanta superstar Brett Favre has announced his retirement from the team with which he has become synonymous.

“He’s the ultimate Falcon,” team owner Rankin Smith said at an emotional press conference. “I’ve cherished every day he’s been here for the past two decades. There was a time, back in the early 2000’s, when I briefly considered selling the team. But then we won our third title, and I thought, ‘there’s no way I can part with a franchise like this. Not with number four back there winning us championships by the handful.”

Smith paused, then added, “Third? No wait, it was the fourth title. Honestly, they just all kind of blend together at this point.”

Fans were understandably emotional, but expressed gratitude for Favre’s tenure with team.

“I’ll never forget watching him play all these seasons in the Georgia Dome,” said Jeremy Murdoch, a sophomore at Mercer University. “I grew up watching Brett and the Falcons. Year after year, game after game, you always knew he would be the one constant on the roster. It would’ve diminished his legacy if he had been one of those guys who bounces around from team to team, you know?”

“And to think, they almost sent him to Green Bay that one time,” Murdoch added, referring to the rejected trade proposal received from Packers GM Ron Wolf in 1992.

Though it seems impossible to envision Favre in anything but an Atlanta uniform, the now infamous offer was nearly accepted by team management, until cooler heads prevailed.

“Yeah, we considered sending him to the Packers,” Smith said, chuckling. “For only a single first round pick, if you can believe that. But thankfully, we stopped and said, ‘ hey, this kid’s a once-in-a-generation guy. You don’t let someone like him get away.’”

“And yeah, other teams came calling sometimes. The Jets and the Vikings both inquired about trading for him, during his later years. But Brett wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I’m not a journeyman. Rankin,’ he told me. ‘I bleed Falcon Red.’”

Recent seasons have, of course, seen Favre retiring, then unretiring, several times. And while such constant wavering might have become an issue with other teams, Falcons brass never took exception.

“Sure, he’s called it quits a few times now, only to show up all of a sudden during training camp and demand his job back,” receiver Roddy White said. “And you know what? That’s fine by us. It’s not like we have some hotshot young QB pushing for playing time, or anything.”